Charleston – a response

It is terribly sad to turn on the news virtually everyday and see what new horrific deeds have happened while myself and my family were sleeping. Beheading’s, mindless killing and destruction in Baltimore, sex trafficking even the murder of unsuspecting people in the House of God attempting to learn a better way to live their lives in a wicked world. There are so many emotions that have gone through my mind during the tragic past few days that I can hardly contain myself. This senseless killing should never have happened and yet as difficult this pill is to swallow, there is no reason to think that this type of hate and violence won’t.

As you are reading there will be some that will and have already thought,”You are nuts”. Maybe. What I will say in this brief message will not be heard, understood or even considered by many if not most. So let me just throw this out to ALL of the news outlets and politicians out there, “We can not eradicate evil.” We can’t do it. All this talk about the why these things happen. Is it fatherless homes? Is it gun laws or the lack there of? Is it poor education? Is it drugs? I say no. These things certainly contribute to bad things happening but they are merely symptoms of a much bigger disease.

Warning…I am going to use scripture to show what’s going on in an attempt to help any believers that are distraught and confused and hopefully encourage any non believers to at least to put away any thinking that the bible is a bunch of fairy tales and at least look at the wisdom in this book. The world that we live since sin entered the world has been violent – the first murder where Cain killed his brother Able and from that has continued to spiral downward and get progressively worse. In Gen. 6:11 we read, “God saw that the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence.”

Scriptures like Proverbs 6:17 and Isaiah 59:7-8 and many more scriptures speak of mans evil ways that lie, is proud and seeks the innocent to kill. There is a lack of peace and harmony among mankind because we have thrown away our moral compass – not lost it, as losing something suggests an accidental misplacing. We threw it out the window. Man has never liked being told what to do, even if it is for our protection. Just look at our children. No one has to teach a child to lie or disobey parent and truthfully, many times parents think that it is cute when a child says “NO” or uses explicit profanity. Just listen in the work place or the schools how people speak to and about each other. The more we push cultural humanism, the more wicked the world has become Why? Because we have as Romans 1:25 says, “traded the truth of God for lies“. We no longer accept or recognize truth but have create our own version of truth; one that suits our “modern” life styles.

In our pride, in our arrogance and in our achievements that we call progress, we have decided that we don’t need God anymore. We are smart. We have money. We have fame and fortune. We have technology at our finger tips. We have closed the door on our God and said, “We don’t want you”. We do this and shake our fist at heaven saying, “If we can’t have same sex marriage, we don’t want you God!” If we can’t have Kaitlyn Jenner’s, we don’t need God!” If we can’t do whatever we want that pleases us and brings immediate pleasure to our bodies then we give God the finger. We have created everything that we could ever want and while things SEEM great, for a while, there is something missing – a huge void. Knowing God

Pause for just a second. Christians, we can call people out for sin. We can categorize sin into levels ranging from bad to worse. We can stand on our soap box and proudly claim our exemption. If that is you, then just go ahead and run for office somewhere. You will fit in just fine. We need to to love folks right where they are, in their sin because somebody loved you and me right where we were in ours and let the transforming power of God do the changing in peoples life. God always has His way and His plans can never be thwarted.

Will behavior modification remedy this worlds problems? Will stricter gun law reduce violence? Will a stronger military stop the bad guys? Doubtful. The problem is sin and sin can only be dealt with by the power of God. Will these things help? Sure, in the short term and I am not against them. But evil always raises its ugly head and when it does, it has gained momentum. History shows that the one thing that we have learned from history is we haven’t learned anything from history. By that I mean the historically (bible history) that if you keep pushing God out, garbage comes in.

Should things like Charleston killings happen? No. Beheadings? No. 911? No. Sex trafficking? No. Will they continue? Yes they will unfortunately…Until Jesus returns. He died to put and end to our enslavement to sin, and evil and twisted thinking but many choose the opposite way of life and the result in chaos, unrest and a lack of peace and they force this on others and the result many times is great loss of life, pain and suffering. My prayers go out to ALL people, of ALL races and ALL ways of life that that would find peace in the only place that true peace can be found – Jesus.